Publisher DTP Crew

This is one of many short video segments which will be added to the Digital Tipping Point (DTP) archive. In this particular segment, Patrick Harvey continues on with the story that he started on the previous segment, segment 003.mpg, about how the electorate is losing interest in the democratic process all across Europe. He feels that it is important for people to feel engaged in the process of governing, and feels that mass electronic communications have added to the electorate's feeling of being cut off from the process. He feels that taking control over the tools of communication with computers might help diminish that feeling through open source, or aggravate that feeling if the tools become more and more closed.

He says that 50 to 100 years ago, political communication required printing pamphlets and physical distribution of those pamphelets over broad distances. Now, websites are enabling people to engage in that type of reach much more easilty. He thinks that this process will be enhanced with greater access and control over computers and software that can come with open source software. As an example of greater engagement, Patrick talks about African-Europeans who have enhanced their organizing impact by using the Internet.

Conversely, if people must consent to a form of technology and giving away control over their tools due to closed software, they will feel that they are not consenting to the process, which will be a problem for democracy.

Keep in mind that Patrick is actually much, much more eloquent than my quick summaries here. He makes a much more convincing case than do I in this summary.

tape id = e-dv045_scotland_01_patrick_harvey_004.mpg

The DTP will be many, many films created by the global open source video community about how open source is changing their lives. We, the DTP crew, are submitting this footage for anyone to rip, mix, and burn under the Creative Commons Attribute - ShareAlike license. We welcome edits, transcriptions, graphics, music, and animation contributions to the film. Please send a link for any contributions to Christian Einfeldt at einfeldt at gmail.com.

Or, if you would like to contribute by directly transcribing this particular video segment, you can do so by going here

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Tape_045

and typing the audio as you hear it into the wiki. Please be sure to add the transcription for this segment under segment 004. You can find other ways to contribute by going to our wiki front page here:

http://digitaltippingpoint.com/wiki/index.php/Main_Page

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Contact Information Christian Einfeldt, einfeldt at g mail dot com